


Clean up that Blood all over your Hands

by Elthadriel



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Recall, SEP era, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-03-03 15:32:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13344165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elthadriel/pseuds/Elthadriel
Summary: During their time in SEP Jack made Gabriel a promise that he intended to keep. He just wished it hadn't had to be under these circumstances.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think the real lesson to take away here is whenever I say "I just want them to be happy" I'm being a filthy liar. I want them to hurt. Because I love them. Seriously though, mind the tags.
> 
> The title is a slightly edited line from Putting the Dog to Sleep by The Antlers which I listened to a lot while writing this song.

“Need help”

 

Jack went from half asleep, squinting into the too bright light of his phone, to completely awake, jolting out of bed in a faction of a second on reading the text. He almost fell in his hurry to pull on his trousers while still staggering to the door of his room. Gabriel’s room was only just across the corridor from his own, but even that felt like to far.

 

They had lost two people to this round of drugs already.

 

Gabriel’s door was unlocked, they had all stopped locking their doors at some point into this hell.

 

“Here,” Gabriel croaked, voice barely more than a horse whisper. He was curled into the corner of his en-suite by the toilet. He apparently hadn’t made it there in time, as there was vomit down the front of his shirt. That wasn’t overly concerning, Jack was throwing up nearly every other day at this point in the experiments, but the sweat soaking through his clothes was.

 

“Shit, Gabe.” Jack dropped down in front of his friend, pressing a hand to his forehead. It was clammy and unnaturally hot.

 

“Bad reaction today’s dose.”  Gabriel tried to laugh but it quickly turn into a hacking cough.

 

“I didn’t know you were getting more today.” Jack started to help Gabriel out of his shirt, revealing even more burning skin. There had been jokes the first time they had had to help strip the other, but they had passed the point where this was even a little funny a long time ago.

 

“Me neither. Told me after dinner.” Gabriel was trying his best to help, but he was almost a deadweight, clearly struggling to even lift his arms.

 

God, this was going to kill them both.

 

“Fuckers.”

 

Gabriel grinned, revealing blood between his teeth; he had a habit of biting his cheek when he was in pain.

 

“I’m gonna get your ass into a cool shower, try and get your temperature down,” Jack said. Gabriel had probably meant to try that himself, but he didn’t look like had the strength to even crawl across the bathroom, never mind stand to turn the shower on.

 

“My Prince Charming.” Gabriel drawled, slumping back into the wall without Jack there to support him.

 

Jack put the shower on as strong as it could manage; at least the government had supplied them with showers with great pressure. Jack stripped off his own clothes, dropping them into a heap before turning back to collect Gabriel. “Which princess does that make you then?”

 

“I always thought of myself as a Jasmine.” Gabriel said, managing a slightly pained smirk.

 

Jack hauled Gabriel up, ignoring how his own muscles, pushed to the limit by his own cocktail of drugs, ached at the effort. He was getting stronger by the day, but the strain on his muscles was unforgiving.

 

“Jesus, Gabe, how much did you eat today? You weigh a tonne,” Jack asked, trying to lighten the mood, as if everyone in the program weren’t eating enough for three regular, non-lab rat soldiers, and as if the evidence of Gabe’s dinner wasn’t all over the bathroom floor.

 

“You shouldn’t have skipped leg day,” Gabriel said. To his credit, he was trying to carry as much of his own weight as he could, but he looked a pale from the effort.

 

“Fucking hell, I’m shocked the god damn carpet can even fly with your fat ass on it. Jasmine is the one from Aladdin right? I haven’t seen one of those movies in ages.” They technically had plenty of downtime, but they spent most of it either suffering awful side effects or wired to the point of paranoia, running laps for hours trying to get rid of the anxious energy.

 

Still, they should try and have a quiet evening and just watch some films; it would do them both good.

 

If the experiments didn’t kill them first.

 

Gabriel laughed, before it broke quickly down into awful retching. Jack barely managed to keep Gabriel on his feet as he staggered, bending almost in half. Blood splattered onto the floor. Jack would have tried to convince Gabriel to go to the med bay, if he thought for a second Gabriel would agree, or that the doctors would have better advice than shrugging and telling them to wait it out.

 

“Fuck, Jack, it hurts.”

 

“I know, sweetheart, I know.” Jack half carried, half dragged Gabriel the last couple of feet to the shower, letting him sink back to the ground once he was under the spray. Gabriel flinched from the water, though it was tepid at worst.

 

“Was there blood in your vomit?” Jack asked, concerned at how natural questions like that had become.

 

Gabriel shook his head.

 

“Just the fever, and vomiting?”

 

“I was shivering earlier, even though I wasn’t cold.” He let out a full body shudder. “I’m cold now.”

 

Gabriel’s skin was still feverish under Jack’s hands.

 

“You’re being a baby, I used to have to take cold showers before school, and it’s not that bad.”

 

“Oh yeah, and then you walked uphill both ways?” Gabriel said with a smile though he was still hunching away from the spray.

 

There wasn’t enough room in the shower for both of them, but Jack squeezed down next to Gabriel anyway. Their sides were pressed tight together. Normally Jack liked the heat of Gabriel pressing up against him, but now it made him worry. What would happen if he they couldn’t get his temperature down? They’d already lost a couple of others to fevers.

 

“Of course, and in the snow, don’t forget about the snow.”

 

Gabriel rested his head on Jack’s shoulder. It was hard to tell with the water, but it looked like he might be starting to cry. Jack was almost tempted to join him. He was so fucking tired.

 

“I know you aren’t as much of a farm boy as you pretend to be, Jackie,” Gabriel mumbled, barely audible over the sound of the shower.

 

Jack smiled despite himself. “Don’t say that too loud, half of my personality is built of people thinking my best friend growing up was a cow.”

 

“Don’t say that about your mother, Morrison.”

 

“Oh fuck you, Reyes. I’ll leave your ass in your own bile next time if you don’t stop talking shit.”

 

“No, you won’t.”

 

Jack turned and pressed a kiss into Gabriel’s hair.

 

“No, I won’t.”

 

\---

 

Their skin was starting to prune by the time Gabriel’s temperature finally dropped down enough that Jack felt safe getting him out of the shower. He carefully washed Gabriel’s hair first, cleaning out the sweat and remains of vomit. Gabriel was mostly silent, but he leant into Jack’s hands.

 

They both got awful headaches that had become so standard they barely warranted mentioning. Jack had lost track of the amount of times they had sat one of them with their head in the other’s lap, an amateur head massage the only thing stopping them from going totally crazy.

 

Sometimes Jack forgot he’d only known Gabriel a few months; it felt like a lifetime.

 

“You think you can sleep?” Jack asked, carefully hauling Gabriel to his feet. Gabriel was standing a little more under his own weight now, but still leant heavily on Jack. They shuffled awkwardly across the wet tiles, careful not to slip.

 

Gabriel shock his head, accepting a towel from Jack. “Still hurts,” he grunted, but didn’t elaborate. He didn’t really need to, Jack was all too familiar with the engulfing pain the drugs could bring. It made their blood feel like fire, burning them up from the inside. They couldn’t last much more of this.

 

He led Gabriel to the bed anyway, leaving him with the towel across his shoulders while he went to find a clean pair of sweats, dragging an extra set from the drawer for himself. His own abandoned in the bathroom.

 

Gabriel was shaking again, tiny little moments across his shoulders and down his arms.

 

“Put this on, I’ve seen more than enough of your ass for one day.”

 

Gabriel smiled weakly, either too tired to make a comment about how no one could tire of seeing his ass, or spending great restraint to hold the comment back. He took the trousers either way, managing to put them on without the help he had needed to get undressed. He couldn’t keep his hands steady, but Jack pretended not to notice as he dressed himself.

 

“Thanks for helping,” Gabriel said, sitting in the far corner of the bed, giving Jack plenty of room to sit down beside him. Somehow they ended up pressed up against each other all the same. “I couldn’t move, or really think, I was just fixated on the idea that this could be hit, ya know, that I could die on the floor of a shitty bathroom, in a shitty army base, and who knows how long it would take them to even find me. Who even knows what they do with our bodies, probably cut us up and do just a couple more tests.”

 

“Breathe,” Jack interjected, placing a hand soothingly on the back of Gabriel’s neck.

 

Gabriel did was he was told, breathing deeply. “Fuck Jack, I’m so tired of being this scared.”

 

“Yeah.” Jack wished he had something clever, or meaningful to say, something to make the situation better.

 

“I don’t know if how much longer we’ll last.” Gabriel drew up his knees, staring blankly past Jack’s head.

 

“Fuck that, don’t talk like we don’t have a chance.” Staying hopeful was becoming harder each day, but the idea that death was unavoidable was unacceptable.

 

“Tommy died this morning.”

 

Jack froze.

 

“What-”

 

“Heart attack.”

 

Jack’s hands were trembling.

 

“We’re gonna die, Jackie.” Jack opened his mouth to interrupt but Gabriel ploughed on. “I’ve been trying to stay positive, but fuck, there’s four of us left, and I’m out of justifications of why I’m gonna live while everyone else dies.”

 

“Justifications?”

 

“It’s fucked up, but shit like I was stronger than them, or smarter, like they deserved it, anything to keep myself from accepting there was nothing I could do, because being helpless to this is,” He swallowed, “real fucking depressing.” Gabriel laughed, empty and hollow. “But with Tommy, and Zoe earlier this week, they were better than my sorry ass. If this shit got them, it’s gonna get me. It’s gonna get all of us.”

 

“They said they think they are close to stabilising it.” Jack hadn’t really believed it when the doctor had first cheerfully shared this information with him, and it sounded even less believable coming from his mouth. Gabriel certainly seemed unconvinced.

 

“I’ll believe it when we stop dropping dead because our bodies either can’t take the strain, or the poison is just a little too lethal.” Gabriel’s eyes were unfocused. “I mean look at us Jackie, my body is freaking the fuck out every other day, and each round of drugs is only making it worse, and you were unconscious for three days after your last shot, and they called that a good sign.”

 

Gabriel ran a hand through his hair, hysteria flirting at the edge of his voice.

 

“They’re killing us.”

 

Jack was crying, he couldn’t help it. He wanted to have faith that they could make it through this, but he was so fucking scared.

 

“Jack just, shit, can you just do one thing for me.”

 

“Anything.”

 

“I’m okay with dying, I really am, this was worth trying if it could have helped in the war, just. Please, I don’t want to die alone.”

 

Jack couldn’t help but feel it was an empty comfort, having someone beside him as he died, but he would walk through fire for Gabriel, he could give him this.

 

“You won’t.” Jack only hoped he'd be able to keep that promise.

 

“You’ll stay?”

 

“Course. I’ll be here.”

 

Gabriel visibly relaxed. “Thanks.”

 

“Not this week though, I have shit planned, so you’re gonna have to put off the whole dying thing for a while, how does six decades from now sound?” He tried desperately to drag the tone back to something lighter.

 

“Sure thing, Jack, I’ll try and make sure my death is convenient to you,” Gabriel said drily.

 

Jack wanted to kiss him, but pushed down the urge. When they’d both made it out of this hell, he’d kiss the bastard, but right now it felt too much like desperation.

 

“Fucking right you will.”

 

Gabriel smiled, and it might even have been sincere.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I only do this because I love them.

When they finally took Reaper down, he didn’t go quietly.

 

Ana was dead, for good this time. Reaper had put a round of one his shotguns through her face, splattering gore across the wall behind her, apparently without an ounce of regret. She had managed to stick him with one of her darts, too late to save herself, but enough to slow Reaper down, enough for Jack to unload more shots into him than any living creature should be able to take.

 

He still wasn’t dead, still trying to struggle to his feet, even as his limbs turned to smoke around him, and his blood, covered the ground. He was snarling like a cornered animal, reaching desperately for one of his guns, metres out of his reach.

 

“Lena, take the others and get out of here, I’ll join you shortly.” It hurt to talk, his voice wrecked from all the shouting he had done.

 

“You sure, Jack?” Tracer flittered anxiously around in the corner of his vision. “He’s still dangerous.”

 

“I’m sure. Get Winston to a doctor, see how much of his arm they can save. I’ll finish up here.” It was stupid risk to take, after all they had sacrificed to get to this point, but Jack had always been a little stupid when it had come to Gabriel.

 

He walked as close as he dared before slipping to the floor, crossing his legs, and placing his gun to the side, but still very much in reach.

 

“Gabe?”

 

Reaper’s mask was cracked, a chunk of it missing down the left side of his face. There was smoke escaping his mouth and nose as he panted, and leaked from the corner of his eyes. His skin was a pasty grey, stretched too tight across his skull. He looked like he had died some time ago.

 

The edges of Reaper’s mouth curled into a snarl, and he abandoned his doomed attempt to reclaim his gun, to making an equally fruitless swipe at Jack. He let out a howl of pain from the effort. Fuck, there was so much blood.

 

“Say what you want to say, Morrison,” Reaper rasped.

 

Sometimes Jack had been able to look at Reaper, even at his worst, and still see part of Gabriel there, in the way he had stood, or something he had said. Now, curled up on himself, dying but still ready to cause as much damage as he could on the way out, there was nothing recognisable left.

 

“I’m not here to say anything.”

 

“Nothing to say?” Gabriel laughed, and then choked, coughing blood and smoke up onto the ground. “That’s a first.”

 

Jack didn’t say anything, but reached up and unclipped his mask, pulling it from his face and placing it down next to his gun. Without it, his vision in his periphery blurred. He wanted to see Gabriel without technology altering his perception.

 

Gabriel tried once again to push himself up, but slammed hard back into the ground, letting out a guttural moan of pain. Jack stayed silent as Gabriel drew steadying breaths.

 

“Just here to gloat then? Either put me out of my misery or let me die in peace, Seventy-Six.” Reaper sounded as tired as Jack felt even as he tried to bury it under layers of rage.

 

Gabriel’s eyes had been the prettiest brown once, but now there was only the thinnest hint of colour around his eerily big pupils, and the whites bloodshot to hell. Jack might have assumed it was a side effect of dying, but Ana had commented on them when she had seen him without his mask. She had seen many people high on all sort of things, but had said none of it had made anyone’s pupils so large.

 

“Will you take your mask off at least?” It was foolish to get emotional, but Jack wasn’t sure how he was meant to do anything else.

 

Reaper, surprisingly tried to comply, but his hands were so slick with blood he couldn’t get a grip, hands slipping uselessly off the faceplate. Jack, abandoning any caution he had left, shifted closer.

 

Reaper’s hand slammed closed around Jack’s wrist as he reached for the mask, but even without testing it Jack could tell he would easily be able to break free. Still, he allowed Reaper the appearance of control and stilled his hand.

 

“What the fuck do you want, Jack?” It would be so easy to reach out and touch the bare skin of Gabriel’s face. They had touched before, since Switzerland, but not without layers of leather between them.

 

“I promised I wouldn’t let you die alone.”

 

Reaper had already been struggling to hid how much pain he was in, but he the expression on his face suggested that hurt more than any of the bullets Overwatch had put into him. His grip slackened and Jack close his fingers around the remains of Reaper’s faceplate. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, perhaps some great insight into what had happened to his partner, but instead there was more of the same discoloured skin.

 

Reaper looked up at him, teeth bared.

 

“You think you can change the fact you  _killed me,_ with some promise you made forty years ago?” He looked desperate.

 

Jack shook his head. He slumped over a little, tugging Reaper’s closer, so he was across his lap, rather than on the ground. Reaper’s blood soaked through his trousers almost instantly. No normal human should be able to lose this much blood.

 

“Fuck you, Jack, all of this is on you, you did this.”

 

Jack knew Reaper was just trying to hurt him, some final, desperate attempt to cause just a little more pain.

 

It still hurt. It was at least partially true after all. Gabriel and Jack had both been just as responsible in the others’ downfall as their own, but it was hard to say they had both faired as badly when Gabriel was bleeding out and Jack was going to walk away from it all.

 

It had always been like that, Jack landing on his feet, while the universe conspired to fuck Gabriel over.

 

“It shouldn’t have been like this,” he said at last. He wasn’t willing to apologise, not after everything Gabriel had done, he wasn’t even sure he could admit fault out loud. If this had been Gabriel he might have been able to do both, but to this shell, acknowledging the unfairness of it was the most he could offer.

 

Reaper laughed, and the bitter tone made Jack whined. “I hope you suffer for this,” Reaper hissed, “I hope it haunts you.”

 

Jack didn’t have anything to say to that.

 

“I was going to marry you,” Jack said after a long silence. He wasn’t sure why he was saying this now, knowing it would hurt Reaper as much as it hurt him. “I was going to be with you forever. I figured we’d retire, eventually, and head back down to Cali, get a house or something, a couple of dogs. Shit Gabe, I was going to spend my whole life with you.”

 

“Stop.” Reaper said, sounding more like Gabriel than he had in years. Jack ignored him all the same.

 

“I loved you.” Jack said softly. “Why did you do this to us, Gabe?”

 

Reaper twisted in his grasp, lashing out, clawed gloves slashing across Jack’s face leaving two shallow cuts across Jack’s jaw. Subduing Reaper was easy even as he struggled, and Reaper’s strength abandoned him quickly. He slumped back across Jack, breathing heavily.

 

“Fuck you,” he managed between gasps. “I hate you.”

 

“I know.” Tears pooled around the edges of Jack’s eyes, blurring his vision even more. Maybe it was better if he couldn’t see, it was easier to pretend the familiar weight in his arms was still Gabriel.

 

“Then go, leave me. Don’t make me endure your bullshit now.”

 

“I’m not leaving.”

 

Reaper laughed again, loud and manic. “You can’t even do this for me. I ask you one fucking thing one my deathbed and you still can’t do it for me. You selfish son-of-a-bitch.”

 

“I promised.”

 

“I think the situation has changed just a little since then,” Reaper said.

 

He wasn’t wrong, and maybe it would be kinder, for both of them, to leave. Jack couldn’t bring himself to move.

 

“Say something,” Reaper snarled, he grabbed Jack’s throat, but it was easy to tug Reaper’s fingers away from Jack’s airways, too easy. Reaper’s strength was failing.

 

“What do you want me to say?” Jack couldn’t help but push the strands of hair that had fallen across Gabriel’s forehead back. His skin was as cold as it looked.

 

“Anything.” Reaper’s chest was heaving, each breathe painful and laboured. “That I did this to myself, that I deserve this, that you hate me,  _anything.”_

 

Jack wet his lips. “I don’t think you deserved this.”

 

Reaper was staring past him, up at the sky. His hand had slipped down from Jack’s throat and was clutching weakly at the front of his shirt.

 

“But you do hate me?”

 

“Sometimes.” Jack was too tired to lie anymore; surprising, as he had always been so good at it. A dashing smile and an earnest tone, and no one would doubt a word that came out of his mouth.

 

Reaper looked relieved and Jack wished he knew what he had been thinking, wished he had time to ask what he had been thinking since everything had gone to shit.

 

“I still loved you at times too, though, but hating you was easier than trying to make sense of how I could love you and fight you at the same time.” He wished there had been some closure for either of them, rather than the trauma of losing him, and then raw pain of getting him back and realising what he had become all in the same moment.

 

Reaper’s face twisted into something that might have been a smile. “Yeah.”

 

The light was starting to fade, and his eyes weren’t good in the dark. Soon he wouldn’t be able to make out anything more than rough shapes. Reaper’s breath was weakening.

 

“I’d still kill you,” Reaper said, “if I could reach my gun, or overpower you. If I could I’d make you die with me.”

 

Jack cupped Reaper’s jaw, running his thumb across his cheek.

 

“I know.”

 

Reaper fell silent, only the rise and fall of his chest indicating he was still alive.

 

Eventually, even that ceased.

 

Jack pushed Gabriel’s corpse off his lap and collected his gun and mask from the ground. They had prepared for this, and Tracer had left the supplies behind. He poured lighter fluid over the body and lit a match. Reaper’s body went up in flames but he didn’t stay to watch.

 

He contemplated collecting Ana’s body, but found he didn’t have the stomach for it. Someone would have to come perform clean up anyway, they could handle it along with the burnt remains of Reaper.

 

He was done with this.


End file.
